'Terror very much alive in India'

It is naive and simplistic to say that the Thursday's blasts in Hyderabad mean that terror has returned to India.

The blasts are extremely tragic but such hyped up observations serve absolutely no purpose. It is wrong to say that terror has returned to India, because terror was very much alive in India and the rest of the world. We might have succeeded in preventing attacks of such a magnitude but that doesn't mean that the threat was never there or that the terrorists had stopped planning such attacks.

The questions that need to be asked are 'who, when and why': Who is behind the attacks? Why were they carried out now? What was the provocation that led to the attack? And why was Hyderabad chosen as the target? Each of these aspects need to be examined in detail.

I heard someone proclaim on the television that this is the handiwork of the Indian Mujahideen (IM). It is wrong and extremely dangerous to make such statements at this juncture. As far as I know, no one has taken responsibility for the attacks. People will say all sorts of things - that Pakistan is behind the attacks, or it is the handiwork of organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Indian Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami and so on.

But this is extremely premature and doesn't help us address the threat. To tackle such threats, one needs to think about what purpose the blasts at the particular time and place would have served. In fact such an exercise would also help us identify if more such attacks can take place.

- A.S. Dulat is a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (As told to Aditya Menon)